Revelation, schmevelation

One of the things that is more or less taken for granted in arguments about organised, literate religions, is that they appeal to revelation. This is in the interests both of the priesthood, who want a source of authority, and of anti-religionists who want to argue that religion does not derive from reason but from dictatorial fiat.

But it is in fact one of the most notable characteristics of Islam and Catholicism as they are practised that they don't solve problems by an appeal to revelation, but to human authority, which is shaped by centuries of argument.

Revelation always demands interpretation, and organised religions need their revelations to be inwardly consistent. Otherwise they get disorganised and disappear. Now the only way to get this kind of inner consistency is with a priesthood which argues from precedent just as lawyers do. There have to be trained exegetes, arguing the meanings of texts according to clearly recognised rules.

There is a parallel here with the way that Americans regard their constitution. I don't meant that it is in fact divinely inspired, nor that most Americans believe it is (though I suspect they do). But whatever its nature, it is treated as if it were a divine revelation, in that it is agreed to be the authoritative document about what it means to be human: you are endowed with certain fundamental rights, and if it can be shown that the constitutions demands or prohibits something then everyone should respect this.

But at the same time it is absolutely not true that everyone's interpretations are equally valid. There is the biggest apparatus of lawyers in the world to decide what the constitution means; and in practice, the source of authority is the supreme court.

Now, you can say what you like about the supreme court, but two things are definitely true. None of its members have been more than human, and it reaches its decisions by reasoned argument. Its decisions may be wrong or perverse on occasions; but they are not arbitrary.

Now, when I look at Roman Catholic bioethics, I see something as crazy as – say – the supreme court's nomination of George W Bush in 2000. But that doesn't make it irrational. On the contrary, there is a huge structure of publicly accessible reasoning to justify these mistaken beliefs and I don't think it's fair to say that they depend on the authority of revelation to an unusual or distinctive degree. What distinguishes them is their adherence to tradition, and in particular the precedents set by previous argument. This is monumentally clear in the case of the prohibition of artificial birth control, which was maintained by Paul VI partly on the grounds that he could not say that his immediate predecessors had been wrong.

Of course, these arguments don't impress people outside the lawyerly or priestly caste. In the case of Humanae Vitae, they were simply rejected wholesale. But even when the conclusions of a priesthood are accepted, this isn't because of revelation. It is done in a spirit of simple submission to the wisdom of the community and I think that is true of the supreme court's rulings, too.

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